


aftermath.

by gallantrejoinder



Category: The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Second Chances, The Couple That Murders Together Stays Together, WHY DID THIS GET CANCELLED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 09:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12861801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallantrejoinder/pseuds/gallantrejoinder
Summary: "Why are you helping me?" Her voice trembles, and he looks back at her with a steady gaze."Because you asked," he says, simply.





	aftermath.

**Author's Note:**

> Literally just finished this an hour ago, please help me.

i. loyalty.

 

When he says those words to her, it is as if the whole world has swung on its axis. 

She looks at him with wonder and horror alike, warring inside her ribcage, and  _understands_  now. Something that she did not understand before.

This is the value of loyalty. Real loyalty, beyond whatever shallows notions of honesty and faithfulness she had once. The ideas that guided her foolish, girlish head into marriage in the first place.

Loyalty, inexplicably, is  _this_  man. He has lied to her for their entire time together, blatantly, without reserve, without ever faltering.

Yet he is the one she called. And, more to the point, he is the one who came.

"Thank you," she manages to whisper.

In her room, as she changes - cooling her face with water, rearranging her hair - she tries not to think about what she has done. But the images keep coming, the sounds, the smell of copper. Her knuckles, as snow-white as her best gloves, grip the edge of her dresser with such force it scares her.

She takes a deep breath. The nausea, the tightness in her chest - he promised her it would pass. 

 _Mr. Garland, he said you're not who you claim to be_.

The upturn at the corner of his mouth as he replied. He was lying again, of course. She's sure of that.

She’s equally sure she will have the truth eventually, if they survive this night.

Inside her head, what has happened keeps coming for her. She searches for something to hold onto - something that is not horrible. And everything goes still when she remembers that for a moment, when he took his jacket off to begin the bloody work, she almost thought he was going to put it around her shoulders.

 

* * *

 

 

"What if someone finds out what we did?" she pleads, distraught in the aftermath of the second bomb to drop on her life that night.

"They won't," he insists.

"You can't know that," she replies, because she is nothing if she is not a nuisance to the people who matter.

Debris falls, and he says something - but she doesn't hear it, suddenly terrified beyond measure, insensible, unable to think of anything but her husband, dead in his grave, and Lucian's face falling still and lax upon the floor of a room that no longer exists. 

And then his hands are upon her, holding her still in the wreckage.

"You shouldn't have come back for me," she whispers, knowing that it's true.

He breathes heavily, for a moment, before a broken smile comes onto his face. "Probably not," he admits.

She laughs, unable to help it. But it breaks her out of her spiral, and that's something very few people can manage, with her.

"Lead the way, Mr. Garland," she orders.

He takes her hand, and he does.

She only allows herself to look back once.

 

 

 

 ii. discretion.

 

They lose the jazz singer and the piano player, and a few guests on top of that. Words are said, many of them by her. Mr. O'Hara is quite obliging on that front, and always turns in a good speech. She sees him eyeing up Miss Garland, and wonders whether it bothers her father. She sees her son eyeing up Miss Garland and Mr. O'Hara alike, one with longing and the other hatred, and for once, finds that it does not require her interference.

What should it matter, anyway? As long as he is discreet. In recent months, she has learned the value of discretion. Her husband may never have understood it, but she does - even better now that he's dead. What their sons get up to is not something she is willing to ruin for them anymore. There is, after all, a war on.

Yet when the dust has settled, and her sons are back to work (and she shows Freddie now, how much she loves him, every time he goes,) there is little else to occupy her. She hadn't realised just how deeply she was relying upon Lucian to keep her from dwelling on all that she had lost, and now – his memory is a thing she will not touch.

It leaves her with little to do but watch the one man who has watched her for twenty years, and wonder.

"Mr. Garland," she says, one day, while they pass each other in the hall.

"Yes, your ladyship?" His voice betrays no signs of concern. He is as prompt and reliable as ever, and it wakes something inside her to see the way he wears his mask for her benefit.

For the hotel's benefit.

"I wish to speak with you regarding some incoming guests, next month. I will be expecting you this evening, at seven," she says, smoothly.

He nods, with a face as still and calm as one of the manmade lakes from her country properties.

"Of course, your ladyship."

She turns and walks away. Listening for his footsteps, she hears him hesitate for only the briefest of moments before continuing on his way. She smiles.

 

* * *

 

 

"We have no particularly noteworthy guests scheduled for the next month," he says, once the doors are locked behind him, and he is standing before her with his gravest and most cautious face upon him. "Therefore, I must surmise your ladyship has ulterior motives in requesting this meeting."

"You always were clever, Mr. Garland," she says, smiling just a little. "No wonder I couldn't fire you when I got the chance."

"My services are entirely within the disposal of the hotel."

"Yes, I know."

She lets the silence sink into him for a little while, letting herself look at him.

"I believe there was the matter of the Irish girl," she says, finally.

He nods. "As I said. She won't be a problem. The bomb which dropped on the hotel that night was ... in its own, terrible way, a stroke of some luck for us. Kate has no reason to question why Mr. D'Abberville was in his room or why you accessed it beforehand. There is no mystery, and she will forget, in time, that she even let you in."

Priscilla nods. "And the men who came for him?"

He answers slowly.

"I was able to convince them, at the time, that he was not in his room. They checked it and found nothing. There was plenty of time for Mr. D'Abberville to return to his room without their knowledge, and the hotel has not been subject to their investigations since."

She hums, satisfied.

"What did he have on Toby?" she asks, voice as blunt as she can make it.

Garland's eyebrow twitches. He wasn't expecting that.

"You tried to warn me about him, and I didn't listen. But I remember that you mentioned Toby. I need to know if he is safe, Mr. Garland. He is my son," she says, rigid in her chair.

"Mr. Hamilton ... may wish to inform your ladyship himself, if you wish to –"

"I do wish to know. I also know that my sons will never tell me anything, if they can help it, but they would tell  _you_  - if they were scared, or trapped, in some manner."

"I wouldn't be so sure, your ladyship -"

"I know, because it is what I would do," she finishes, her voice clear of doubt.

He fumbles for words, and she stops him.

"It is what I _did_."

He looks at her with something about his eyes, something she has not seen there before. Finally, he speaks.

"Toby came to me because Mr. D'Abberville was blackmailing him. I believe that Mr. D'Abberville caught him ... Caught him in a compromising position, with someone he ought to have been more discreet with."

Priscilla frowns. "What, a German? A chambermaid? Who?"

"A man, your ladyship."

Priscilla was trained very thoroughly in her youth not to gawp like a fish, and that is why she does not let her mouth hang open in shock now.

"Why did you not inform me?" she asks, in a brittle voice, the only sign of her distress.

He looks at the floor before answering, but his gaze is steady when it returns to her face.

"Because he was afraid of anyone knowing. Most of all, I believe, he was afraid it would get back to his family."

Priscilla swallows.

"Well, and so he ought to be," she mutters.

Garland's eyebrow twitches once more, his jaw suddenly tense.

"Your ladyship, Mr. Hamilton has always been -"

"A good boy. He's always been a good boy," she interrupts. "Well. I shall have to talk to him directly. He must be told to use more discretion in future."

Garland's training in his youth is probably the equal of hers, because he hardly blinks, even as his whole face seems to transform, the amazement in his eyes so sudden she almost laughs.

Priscilla nods to herself.

"Thank you, Mr. Garland, that will be all."

He pauses on the rug, seeming to want to speak. But then he turns, and is gone as silently as he came. Priscilla watches him go with no sense of loss. He will always come back, when he is required.

 

 

 

 iii. truth.

 

She talks to Toby. When the fear in his eyes translates to a nervous tapping of his feet, she lightly smacks his knee in reproach, even as she feels a pang of guilt for making him think he can't be honest with her. As she conveys what she knows, though, (in the most delicate terms she is capable of,) his demeanour changes. The disbelief on his face does irritate her a  _little_ , but still, that is the way with parents and children, she's found. 

What is most important, in the end, is his choked agreement to be more careful with his ... _friend_ , and the way that he suddenly steps forward to hold her, making her jump. She cannot remember the last time one of her sons was in her arms, and it brings some warmth to her eyes to realise that he's almost taller than her now.

And that settles that.

The bombings continue, and play havoc on her nerves. But if she can survive a sham of a twenty year marriage, a scheming, lying fiancé who made a deal with the devil, and the running of a hotel where the gentry demand the level of respect they believe they are due, she can survive anything. Of that, she is quite sure.

Garland continues to run things as smoothly and efficiently as ever – though, as she takes a closer interest in the business of running, she notices that some kinder part of him seems to be blooming without the demands of her deceased husband upon his head. For the first time, she begins to wonder whether he was as trapped as her, for all those years.

Difficult to consider such a thing, of course. It's frightfully irritating to think that the only man worth hating is already dead. Even worse to miss him anyway.

But it is the truth. The truth is another virtue she has begun to understand the value of, since her husband's death. His lies destroyed her, and knowing how they were created, by whom, and why, is strangely freeing.

Freedom is a stranger to her. When she was first gifted with it, she didn’t know what to do with it. She wept for her jailor, and lashed out at the only one who understood why she was doing it. She latched onto the nearest reminder of who she had been before her marriage, to her folly. But she knows now. She cannot be the person she once was, before she was married to Lord Hamilton. It is foolish to try.

 

* * *

 

 

After one of their daily meetings regarding the running of their hotel, Priscilla stops Mr. Garland, before he can leave. She stands, walks around the desk, and looks him in the eye.

He stills.

“You told me once that you would not stand here and lie to me,” she says, without faltering, “and I laughed in your face, because we both knew that that was exactly what my husband required you to do, for twenty years.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, your ladyship,” he says evenly.

He really doesn’t. She can see it in his eyes.

“I am going to ask you a question, and I require an honest answer.”

He nods, looking with a steady gaze. Directly in her eyes, the way her husband and Lucian never quite managed.

“Will you ever lie to me again, Mr. Garland?”

He holds his silence for a moment, considering his answer. She can almost hear his heartbeat above her own.

“I will not,” he says, finally.

“Good,” she replies, and kisses him.

He wasn’t expecting her to – she feels him stiffen, and the naïve girl who married Mr. Hamilton, the child that still lives inside her, suddenly rears her head, demanding that she step back, hissing that she’s misunderstood, that he cannot possibly want her.

But before she can pull back, he puts his hands around her waist, and presses her closer, pulling her in, in the way a man ought to. She opens her mouth below his, and the whole damn world disappears for those few brief seconds.

He pulls back.

“Priscilla,” he whispers.

“Richard,” she replies.

He shakes his head, and the blood in her veins freezes.

“Sam,” he says quietly. “My real name is Sam Green.”

A slow smile breaks across her face as she looks at him, considers the tentative hope and fear in his eyes.

“Sam,” she says, and kisses him again – this time, without stopping.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi so 1) Why did this show get cancelled and 2) How do I move on and 3) OH MY GOD, LADY HAMILTON AND MR. GARLAND COULD HAVE BEEN THE BEATING HEART OF THIS SHOW, FUCK MY LIFE.
> 
> [My Tumblr.](https://gallantrejoinder.tumblr.com/)


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